Hotspot Device multiple connects

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gnfb

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#171459 19-Apr-2015 11:52

It seems most hotspot "devices" talk about being able to connect 8 or 10 persons. Is there a practical (cheap) solution for connecting say 100 people to a single hotspot. I know cell towers have a limited number of connections. It was the idea of having a advice that is portable and would connect say 100 people. What if you connected say 10 hotspots "together" sorry I know what i want to achieve, just don't know the science. But then that's why we have you guys!!

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sbiddle

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#1287139 19-Apr-2015 11:58

Yes. Buy something like a Mikrotik router that has 3G/4G support and put multiple access points or something capable of handling 1200 devices such as a Ruckus AP.

You've obviously going to need to look at the usual per user shaping or restrictions if you've got 100 users connecting back over a ~15Mbps 3G connection.

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#1287168 19-Apr-2015 13:07

Mikrotik RB800
Equip it with a 3G/4G card and then fill the rest up of the pci slots up with 2.4GHz cards. Set it to share clients across the radio's and you might make it to 100 clients.

Performance would be pretty rubbish with just 3G but could be OK on 4G with the right queueing in place.

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#1287184 19-Apr-2015 13:42

IMHO this is likely to produce an unusable result. My experience with 3G and 5 devices is poor. If you are in a 4G coverage area, then you are almost certainly in an area where you can get DSL or UFB.

Not to mention how quickly you'll run up a ridiculous cellular data bill.

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JoshWright

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#1287201 19-Apr-2015 13:51

I'm sure it's possible, but from my experience 3G connections shared with anymore than 10 people are always unusably slow. For example on Nakedbus and Mana Bus services the Wi-Fi always has heaps of people using it and is just too slow to be good for anything.

gnfb

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#1287516 20-Apr-2015 09:17

Thank you for your helpful and informative replies

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raytaylor

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#1290516 24-Apr-2015 01:17

You may also want to read up on CSMA and collision collapse.
A quick summary: As more client devices connect to a wifi access point, they fight for airtime. If a device wants to transmit, it goes ahead and transmits.
If another device / ap is transmitting a stream of packets, the interference will cause the acknowledgement or CRC check to fail. Each device then waits a random amount of time, and tries again. Hopefully with both waiting different times and their packets will get through on the second try. This cycle repeats and repeats until the downtime caused by the random recovery delays causes a collapse in total throughput.

With b/g/n wifi, if there is 10mbits of bandwidth avaliable, two devices wont get 5mbits each - collision collapse might give them 3mbits each, with the other 4mbits going to wasted air time.

TDMA however (like cell towers use) gives each client device a specified time to transmit its packets. Each 1 second period is divided up into multiple slots. If a device wants to transmit, it does so within its allocated time slot. The overall delay time is less because there is no recovery needed. If a device is transmitting / recieving a stream of data, it can temporarily request more timeslot allocations for faster speed, while stopping at specified slots to give others a chance to transmit.

When I last looked at wikipedia, it said TDMA was a feature in draft 802.11ac but I am not sure if many manufacturers implemented it in the end.

So a way to work around CSMA collision collapse is to simply have less active users on an AP. That may mean running three seperate APs. In a typical office setting where computers are occasionally opening and saving 50kb spreadsheets and word documents from a server, you wouldnt have more than 30 users on an AP.
With streaming video or constant network traffic (even if each user is only pulling a small amount of data - BUT CONSTANT DATA) then you may not want to have more than 5 or 10 on a single AP.

In your situation, if you think that the cellular data speed will be enough to suit your users, then you could use a router with 3g dongle attached.
The router itself could then be used as an AP for 10 clients. You can then add extra access points hard wired via a switch to add extra capacity. If you used extra routers, you could dumb them down to be simple switches and AP's by switching off their built in DHCP servers (leaving only the master router dhcp server enabled) and giving them each an individual ip address.

But having multiple routers presents another problem.... Radio Channels.
In the 2.4ghz band there are only 3 non-overlapping channels. 1/3/11
This means you can have a maximum of 3 AP's before they start interfering with each other.
A way around that is smaller cell sizes - like cell towers, you can use the landscape to limit the range of each access point by turning down its power, and using walls and objects to create isolation. Then the same channel may be re-used over the other side of a building.
Alternatively you could use some 5ghz AP's as there are another 5 or so channels available to you.

In big conference auditoriums and sports stadiums where wifi is offered, the RF engineers will often use little teeny tiny but highly direcional antennas on the APs and position them down low in the room so that people/chairs/tables can be used to attenuate the signal, and stop it going very far, so the same channel may be used by another mini wifi cell / AP over the other side of the room. But thats when they have thousands of users.

If you have 100 users, I would say 6-10 APs (3x on 2.4ghz and the rest on 5ghz) should work

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sbiddle

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#1290538 24-Apr-2015 07:27

raytaylor:

If you have 100 users, I would say 6-10 APs (3x on 2.4ghz and the rest on 5ghz) should work

Or a single Ruckus 7762AC - these will allow up to 512 simultaneous connections. I've used them in production environments with ~150 connections indoors split between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz with absolutely amazing performance

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#1291576 26-Apr-2015 00:17

Are you connecting the hotspot to an ADSL uplink or mobile/cellular or what? All 100 users have to share that bandwidth if they are likely to be using all at once.

Number of users depends on processing power and radio frequencies supported by the access points, but aerohive might be worth investigating and I would recommend that you get one that supports both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.

Time to find a new industry!

gnfb

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#1291701 26-Apr-2015 12:27

Please do not read if you are offended by poor grammar and spelling Read if you like content.

OK sorry where my brain was going was here...

I have a device that I can say take to a conference, school, uni that will broadcast a signal maybe say music but you had to be within a certain distance.

Working similar to whats it called ..... using it in china riots ...BRB ugggh I can t find it now

So long winded explanation because my memory is shot

so they used this app in china two mobiles could connect together and NOT be on the internet then those two could connect with another two and so on and they used a app to do it.

So use a similar technology to create a radio station say within a 5oom area by connecting mobiles with the above method?

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gnfb

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#1291720 26-Apr-2015 13:35

Firechat its called the app that connects without the internet

Firechat android

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